


What the Red Widow Brings

by GoeticDisciple



Series: God and Gunpowder [3]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fear, Heterosexual Sex, Hostage Situations, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Shameless Smut, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:09:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoeticDisciple/pseuds/GoeticDisciple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of wanderers is caught by the Immortan Joe's forces. One woman attempts to curry the Immortan's favor in an attempt to assuage her guilt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Red Widow Brings

**Author's Note:**

> Was having trouble with Chapter 13 of The Bullet Farmer's Daughter so I wrote this instead.
> 
> And if you were wondering to what use Cal's hard-won fire truck would be put, now you know.

We’re caught.  
  
They’ve kept us sitting in the hot sun to soften us up.  
  
The gleaming red-and-chrome behemoth pulls away. It slides a little on the dune and I hear what sounds like an enormous amount of water sloshing inside. Not possible. No one has that much water, this far out in the Waste.  
  
A man with a skull-faced mask comes to watch us shrivel.  
  
He’s sitting down on a chair one of his men dragged into the shade cast by a remaining vehicle. Hands on his spread knees. Codpiece gleaming beneath his belt. He’s got his chin tucked down and is regarding the world heavily from under his bushy eyebrows.  
  
His intelligent, calculating gaze sweeps across us, pauses, sweeps back, slower this time. He sticks on the younger one and I see him doing some kind of quick calculation in his head. Passes to the next, slides blankly across and then catches on me. My heart spins up in my chest. His attention is a boulder rolling to a slow stop on my neck.  A hot flush explodes throughout me as I look everywhere on him but his eyes.  
  
It lasts an eternal single second, then he’s sweeping over the others, blank again.  
  
The older women sob a little. They’re afraid: of him, of his gleaming-forehead attendants with their shirtless brawn and hungry expressions. They mutter to each other in a continuous burble of self-soothing pap. Our two men are quiet, observing, controlled. I go to the youngest one. She is dull with terror and the shock of her broken ankle. The skinny one has curled into herself and appears to be sleeping. I know she is not.  
  
We’re not allowed to move around much, but they didn’t tell us we couldn’t stand. I get up, slowly as to not cause alarm, and stretch a little, then position myself at the rear of the group. Hands clasped behind my back, feet shoulder width apart, I settle the dense air into my lungs and smooth out the fear bunching at the base of my skull.  
  
One of the lanky workers comes hustling. White dust chases after him. He speaks a few words to a shiny forehead guard. The message is passed to the king or general or leader or whatever he is. With a grunt of acknowledgement, the king rises heavily to his feet. The chair is folded up and taken away.  
  
Before he leaves, he scrapes his gaze over us again. He ignores the young one this time and pauses only on me. I stay still and feel sick.  
  
He dips his chin, exhaling slowly. His stare is unbleached, unexpected blue.  
  
Then he departs with his entourage, leaving one shiny forehead armed with a tommy gun to guard us.  
  
I stand until I feel like I can’t breathe.  
  
  
  
  
___________________________  
  
  
They come to herd us into a long, ragged hauler stinking of diesel. It’s a repurposed livestock transport. Or maybe not. Maybe we _are_ the livestock. The men are loaded first, a door inside clanging and then their voices shout in alarm. Separated. The men’s half is sealed with a lock. The women are directed to the unlocked section.  
  
It’s strange how the shiny forehead men help the youngest one up with a careful gentleness. The skinny one is treated with almost as much care. They ignore the older two with their safe-word cocoons, watching with disinterested expressions as the women pause briefly in their speaking to struggle over the tailgate.  
  
I am last. I have decided I am the rear guard, the watcher.  
  
When I move to grab the pull loop and step up, one of the guards speaks. “That one stays.”  
  
I am guided back to my footprints in the dust. The terrified faces of my group flash back at me, voices rising as they realize I am being held back. The truck’s roaring ignition silences their shouted cries.  
  
A shiny forehead grabs my wrists and puts them through two loops of leather. The hauler pulls away in one direction; I am pulled in the opposite.  
  
  
  
_________________________  
  
  
I thought the ragged hauler was big, but this vehicle is more ship than truck. I know what ships are. As a child, I saw the great Eastern wrecks frothing the sand with droplets of rust.  
  
Two enormous smokestacks make up the masts. They trap the downing sun to glow molten with its light. Between them, the indigo sail of the oncoming night is stretched smooth and clean. The vehicle's olive hull is streaked with the omnipresent dust and I can see where hands have been pressed, a shoulder scraped by, a tic-tac-toe game half finished on the front quarter panel. Its rag-festooned steel prow is made for splitting dunes. Sand outlines the flaming skull figurehead welded to the prow. Someone took the time to grind all the sharp edges mirror-smooth.  
  
Everything about this sand-ship is pristine.  
  
I know the blue-eyed man with the mask will be inside it.  
  
I am walked up to a chromed running board. My handler raps twice on the door. The lock pops.  
  
When he helps me inside, he is gentle like he was with the young one. A padded seat receives me. My hands are unbound and my wrists checked for proper circulation. The man reaches into a pocket at the base of the seat and produces a canteen. It is deposited in my lap.  
  
“Drink while you wait,” he says, and leaves.  
  
The water stinks of mildew, but it is wet and my throat is grateful. The compartment I am in is little larger than a crate. An opening with what appears to be a sliding door sits directly across from me. Again, someone polished the welds until they were quicksilver. Skull motifs decorate the walls. Staring, gleaming death. I touch one to prove that it cannot hurt me.  
  
I still have half the water left in the canteen when the sliding door clicks and retracts. A flutter of white fabric tells me who opened it.  
  
His voice is deep and surprisingly cultured. “Come.”  
  
I heed the order. No mean lout, this one. I need to be careful, so careful.  
  
This compartment is much larger. Mobile living quarters. He reclines on a bench seat bolted to the far wall. The shiny clear armor hangs on a peg. In its place, a white linen shirt is draped across his broad frame and his long hair is held back by a leather thong. The fearsome mask is gone but the mouth underneath is as cruel as the grinning horse teeth. The smell of talc is intense and I can’t help it when I sneeze.  
  
He chuckles.  
  
“Sit, have something to eat.”  
  
I look at the fold-down table to my left. Saliva explodes in my mouth at the sight of the bread and amazingly, an orange. The boulder of his attention is back on my neck. I curse silently when I realize I’m looking at him for additional approval to move. His lips twitch in a faint smile and he makes an expansive gesture with his hand.  
  
I sit. The salt in the bread fries my brain with joy and my tongue is bitten by the orange’s sweetness.  
  
He watches me eat. He’s pinching and smoothing the pleats in his trousers in an even rhythm. He’s got large hands which possess a methodical grace. The fabric is stroked with fussy precision. I realize his nails are nicely trimmed, everything about him is kept. Even the shiny foreheads who serve him, with their stubbled chins and sweaty chests, are coarse. But he – king or general or leader – he is refined.  
  
How much effort must it take, I think, swallowing pulp, to keep oneself so put-together?  
  
“A penny for your thoughts,” he asks.  
  
“Are there even pennies any more?” I counter back.  
  
“A few. Here and there.” He smiles. “Lucky ones, mostly.”  
  
“Like me?”  
  
“Like you.”  
  
We don’t talk again until I have finished the bread and collected the orange peel into a neat pile.  
  
“Come sit by me,” he says and pats the bench seat with one of those careful, manicured hands.  
  
I wonder what’s happening to the others. I can’t imagine they are being fed bread and oranges and sitting on soft things. A pang of guilt stabs me as I ease down next to him, but it is quickly erased when he puts his hand on my knee. The others might be hungry and uncomfortable in that hauler, but they aren’t going to have to do what I’ll be doing soon.  
  
“Look at me.”  
  
This close to him, it’s hard to be bold. It was easier with a room’s worth of distance. His blue eyes are framed with dark lashes and dry crow’s feet. They take in my face, settle for a short while on my neckline, then pass lower. He grasps up my right hand loosely and brings it to his nose, inhaling. Smelling the scent of the orange he gave me.  
  
His eyelids flutter closed as he presses his lips against my fingers.  
  
I realize it wouldn’t take much to rake him with my nails.  
  
He reads it somehow. His grip turns into a vise and his eyes pop open.  
  
“Don’t you dare,” he whispers.  
  
“I wasn’t–“  
  
He silences the lie with two fingers to my lips. As he tilts his head to the side, eyes heavy with threats, his free hand slides down over my throat. That hand, soft as it might be, is full of power. I go rigid.  
  
He reads that, too. “Not going to choke you, dear,” he purrs. His fingers slip around to the base of my skull and settle there. I am gripped hard. Limp submission floods me.  
  
“That’s better,” he grins, and bends to press his face to my throat.  
  
I’m in such trouble.  
  
  
  
  
___________________________  
  
  
It shocks me when I feel my body begin to respond.  
  
I’m scared to death. It shouldn’t happen It does anyway. He’s so strong and it sparks an ember in me. The seat springs creak as he forces me onto my back, my right wrist still clamped tight in his fist. I might as well be a wilted daisy left out on a sunny table in too little water. He shifts himself, bringing his full weight to bear across my legs and hips. I am pinned and he knows it.  
  
He’s serious when he pulls away from my throat.  
  
“If you fight me, I’ll kill you right here.” His fingers loosen a little on my wrist. “I’d prefer not to do that, though. I didn’t feed you so you could die with a full stomach.”  
  
“What do you want?” I manage.  
  
His eyes narrow. “Don’t be dense. You know what this is.”  
  
I look away. It’s too much. I can feel him breathing, his belly pressing heavy against mine. My tunic has ridden up a little and the warmth of him through the linen of his shirt is a red-hot brand across my stomach. He’s enormous and powerful and my body responds to the animalism of him, traitoring my brain. A spark of desire fires up between my legs.  
  
When he bends to my neck again, he lets go of my wrist and buries his fingers in my hair. My hand stays suspended for a moment then I lower it to his burly shoulder. His lips find my earlobe, his breath growing urgent against my skin. Another tingle races through my core. My fingers tighten.  
  
I tell myself it’s not a surrender.  
  
  
  
___________________________  
  
When he kisses me, I kiss him back.  
  
It starts out rough. He’s expecting resistance. He makes a soft noise in his throat when I allow his tongue into my mouth and caress it with my own. The acceptance slows him down and gentles him somewhat. I feel his entire body relax. His grip on my skull is eased as the kiss deepens and continues. The hand in my hair unwinds. As he pulls back from my mouth, he gently strokes my forehead.  
  
His thumb traces eyebrows, cheekbone, the line of my jaw. “What’s your name?”  
  
I tell him. It sounds foreign. I’m not that person anymore. That person would have fought.  
  
“My name is Joe,” he tells me, unasked.  
  
This is all so surreal. I’m in some kind of war wagon, with a strange man lying on top of me, the taste of his mouth fading on my tongue and we’re engaging in pleasantries. “It’s nice to meet you,” I say, and the crazed laughter comes out of me before I can stop it.  
  
Joe seems pleased. His hair is coming loose from its thong. He reaches up and strips the leather away. Long locks fall free over his shoulders. He has deep widow’s peaks and the silvered hair arcing back from them is a lion’s mane. There is something in his eyes now that wasn’t there before: a sad thing, small and almost anxious. It pools in the line between his brows. I see for a moment the man he once was. Not a good man, but also not what he is now.  
  
“Please don’t hurt me,” I say.  
  
The sad thing flickers. “If you don’t fight–“  
  
“I won’t fight.”  
  
“Then it will be fine.”  
  
Knots of emotion coil and tangle under my breastbone. His voice is so smooth. The desire in his eyes is real. He’s not hurting me; he’s just heavy and his hand that’s stroking my hair is gentle enough. I want to believe he just does this with the women he inducts but if that was the case, he’d be working his way through the others from my group as well. Instead, it’s just me and I know why. Because I refused to huddle and weave word cocoons. Because I stared.  
  
Because I stood out.  
  
My heart grows hard at the thought. I will keep my spirit. No matter what he does. I will remain myself, whoever I am now. I will survive.  
  
I reach up to pull his head down. He hesitates for a second, then locks his mouth over mine.  
  
I’ll play the game. I’ve done this before.  
  
  
______________________________  
  
  
  
  
This is just a man, I tell myself as he ravishes me. Just a man, not some were-lion of the sands.  
  
Yet, the scale of this is overwhelming.  
  
He’s kicked open a door to another, smaller compartment behind the main living area and in this one is a bed. A real bed, complete with clean blankets and smooth sheets. He leads me in by the hand. It is on this that we now lay. I look up at the ceiling, which is patterned with that same flaming skull.  
  
It’s on their necks, I realize. It’s branded on their necks. Every last person I’ve seen - the white painted warriors, the shiny forehead men, the dirty workers - they all bear it.  
  
His mark, burned into their skin.  
  
I slip my hand around the back of his neck. Smooth.  
  
Of course. He’s the leader. The leader would not himself bear the mark. It’s a cult. That’s the only way to explain.  
  
“Are you a prophet?” I ask when he allows me to breathe.  
  
His blue eyes light up a little. “Close.”  
  
“If not a prophet, what then?”  
  
He slips a hand under my tunic to squeeze my breast. “I am the Immortan. He Who Grabs the Sun.”  
  
  
  
________________________________  
  
  
The wind howls loudly at the windows, begging to be let in. The huge vehicle rocks a little as tickles of air whistle in through the gaps in the weatherstripping. The noise distracts the Immortan.  
  
_The Immortan?_ Just a man.  
  
He rolls off me, slams down the metal shutter. The whistling is throttled.  
  
I stay put, but he does not climb back on me. Instead, he sits on the edge of the bed, regarding.  
  
“You led them, did you?” he asks.  
  
“I did.” I take a chance. Slide back and sit up. I’m still dressed as is he.  
  
“You didn’t put up much of a fuss when we took them away.”  
  
“If I had, would it have changed things?”  
  
“No.”  
  
I pick at the coverlet. “Then perhaps you can understand why I didn’t want to waste water crying after them.”  
  
“But they were your people.” His tone is judgmental.  
  
I sigh. The weight of what I’ve done rests heavy on my shoulders. “I led them, and they followed me, but they were not my people. They were just… people.”  
  
He puts his hand over mine and draws close. Interest competes with the lust in his eyes. “Who are your people, then?”  
  
I have no answer. I’ve been asking myself that same question for over five thousand days. He’s watching my mouth with intent. “No one.”  
  
“Free and unfettered,” is his response. “The best kind.”  
  
  
________________________________________  
  
  
He shoos me off the bed so he can sprawl across the middle of it. “Take off my boots.”  
  
I do a passable job, then stand, heart pounding, waiting for the next order.  
  
“Now take yours off.”  
  
I hop on one foot and he laughs, sits forward and steadies me with a hand at my elbow. Then he pulls me into his lap, caressing my body through my shirt. His fingers work the tie at my throat. “Here, let me help you.”  
  
The chill air raises gooseflesh along my arms after he tosses my tunic into a corner.  
  
“Are you cold?” he asks.  
  
“A little.”  
  
He gets up and flips on a small heater welded into the wall. The smell of warm kerosene perfumes the compartment. “Better?”  
  
I nod. I can’t make sense of him. Of this. I expected to be raped six times over by now, and he’s feeding me, asking me if I’m cold.  
  
“Confused, aren’t you?”  
  
Caught, I lower my eyes.  
  
“It’s all right,” he says. Crossing his hands at the waist, he pulls his shirt up and over his head. Barrel-chested by nature and very well-fed. In a few years, he probably will be fat. “I am not the monster you think me to be.”  
  
“I never said–“  
  
“Shhh.” He drops the shirt on top of mine then approaches.  
  
Just a man, he’s just a man. I try to snap the tension with humor. “All right. You caught me, Joe.”  
  
He takes my hand and puts it on his belt buckle. He grins but his eyes are hard again. “I did, didn’t I?”  
  
  
  
_______________________  
  
  
I wish he would just hurry up. Rape me. Get it over with. Instead, he bears me back down on the soft bed, throws one naked leg between mine and gazes down at me. The sad thing is back, surfacing then sounding, like the whales my mother told me about.  
  
“You’re a pretty girl,” he murmurs. I’m not sure if he’s seeing me or someone else, in the lens of his memory. “Very pretty.”  
  
What else can I do but play along? I stroke his flank, eliciting a shiver along his body. “You’re kind.” I think for a moment. “I forgot to thank you for the food and water.”  
  
This pleases him. “Manners. How rare.”  
  
“I was raised well.”  
  
“And your parents are where?”  
  
“Don’t know.” It’s the truth. The sand storm which swallowed them was thousands of days ago. And if I did know, I would never tell him. Only a man, I remind myself, not a monster who can read thoughts. I settle my hand in the small of his back, fingers moving in light circles. Between my legs, his thigh tenses and presses up, just enough to send an unwanted thrill through my groin. Now it will be soon. It has to be soon. My fear is waning. The bed is so comfortable, the sheets cool and sensual under my shoulders and hips. If he doesn’t attack me soon, the fear will disappear completely and this will become something else.  
  
“You’re getting wet,” he whispers, pulsing his leg. “I can feel it.”  
  
I close my eyes. It’s already happened.  
  
  
  
  
________________________________  
  
  
When he puts his mouth between my legs, I don’t even try to throttle the moan that erupts from my throat. My fingers find the top of his head and splay through his soft hair. It’s been so long since someone did this to me well, and he’s very good. The sensation of his tongue is almost too much. He laps quick circles around my clit then slowly, carefully, kisses the insides of my thighs. There is pressure at my opening and then he’s sliding one, then two fingers, into me.  
  
“Delicious.” His fingers move in and out. “Well mannered and _responsive_.”

  
  
_______________________________  
  
  
He doesn’t let me come. He licks and sucks, fucking me with his hand, raising his dark eyebrows when my hips start to lift off the sheet to meet his mouth. I wrap my legs around his face. He grunts into my flesh, drinking my wetness and stopping just before I tumble over the edge.  
  
He smiles. I force myself to ignore the razors in it.  
  
“You want me, don’t you?”  His eyes tell me how I should answer.  
  
“Yes, Joe.” It’s not me who speaks. It’s some other woman. Some whore. “Yes, please.”  
  
The kiss he plants where my pubic bone is almost reverent. “So _polite.”_

  
_______________________________  
  
  
If the others saw me, I would be ashamed. I am ashamed as is.  
  
He’s pumping his hips in a complementary rhythm to my sucking. My mouth is very full. My fingers around his shaft slide up and down. He presses on my head, controlling my pace.  
  
I’m doing this for them, I think. It’s the least I can do. Especially since I got us caught. If I please him, maybe he will treat them with mercy.  
  
Swirling my tongue around the head of his throbbing cock, I make him gasp. His gaze is blank now and his chest heaves. A heavy-lidded look rides my face as I lap pre-come from the tip of him and swallow. Moisture of my own slithers down my inner thighs.  
  
Who am I kidding?  
  
I’m doing this to save myself.

  
_______________________________  
  
  
“Come up here.” The hand in my hair tugs gently. So far, everything has been gentle, except for how he grabbed my wrist at the start. Even that hadn’t lasted.  
  
He scoots into a sitting position and I crawl along the muscular length of his legs until I am poised over his lap. We kiss again, tasting each other. The ache inside me is liquid sin.  
  
I sit down on him. He waits until I’ve settled, hands resting lightly on my hips.  
  
“Are you ready, pretty girl?”  
  
Again, I don’t understand. Why isn’t he slamming away already? It’s like he wants me to rape myself on him, so he can hold himself harmless.  
  
I place my hands on his broad shoulders. “I’m ready.”  
  
“Ride me, then.”

  
  
______________________________  
  
  
He makes me do all the work. I impale myself over and over while he sucks my nipples into hard points. Every thrust sends shockwaves throughout my loins. The last man I was with was merely functional. We alternated night watches, shared our water, and when it came time to be human, we grunted together quietly with workmanlike efficiency. I required little, and he required less. We parted ways at a collapsed rock tower with no tender words, no tears, no emotions at all. Just two living things who had needed each other for a short while… and then didn’t anymore.  
  
This will be different. There’s no mistaking it. My body is on fire. Joe’s flesh in mine is an ember warming every lonely night I have spent on the road. There will never be another darkness where I do not want for that ember. In such a short time, he has burned himself into me, branding me from the inside out.  
  
I plunge down and he holds my hips still, his cock buried in me. His eyes are fierce with a thousand different things. “You are mine.”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
The orgasm comes sweeping. I cry out, shaking, fingers digging into the heavy muscles of his arms.  
  
“Come for me,” I hear him say. He rolls to the side, and then I’m on my back, still convulsing, his weight crushing the air out of my lungs. “Come, pretty girl, come for your god.”  
  
  
________________________________  
  
  
It’s a long night and a terrible morning.  
  
He fills me with seed three times and each time he is different.  
  
_Just a man –_  
  
The first is quick. He pumps heavily into me, snarling, rearing up as he climaxes, torso shining with sweat.  
  
_Only a man –_  
  
The second takes longer. He kisses the back of my neck with tender attention and penetrates me from behind as we lay on our sides, spooned together. One hand cups my belly and I wonder: of all them, will it be him who starts a child?  
  
_Just a– just a– just–_  
  
The third is in the morning. We’ve slept a while and light is now seeping through the edges of the steel shutter. Joe feels me stir and draws me close, but his embrace isn’t gentle. His arm is an iron bar trapping me against his chest.  
  
“Where do you think you’re going?”  
  
I eye the narrow door at the very back of the sleeping compartment. “I need to use the latrine.”  
  
“Fine,” he says, and I hear it. The meanness. The cruelty. The sound of it renews my earlier terror. It was easy to pretend I’d imagined the danger while he was using his tongue to make me scream with pleasure. Easy to tell myself his large hands would always be soft. Easy to ignore the healed bullet and knife wounds decorating his body, hallmarks of a vicious and victorious life lived.  
  
Now I will meet who he really is.  
  
I do my business as quick as I can and return. Maybe that will gentle him. It does not. He catches me by the throat before I can even finish closing the door. I am shoved up against the wall. The vehicle rocks on its springs.  
  
“Next time,” he warns, “You’ll ask permission first.”  
  
“Yes, Joe,” I whisper. It’s not possible to speak louder; he’s choking most of the air out of me.  
  
“You don’t piss, or eat, or drink, or dress without my approval. Is that clear?”  
  
_Yes, Joe._ No air. Just mouth shapes.  
  
He lets me breathe right before I black out. My legs fold up and from far away, I feel him hauling me across the room. I am tossed face down on the bed. Then he’s on me.  
  
“I own you,” he snaps at the back of my head. Rough fingers push deep inside my body. “I own every inch of you.”  
  
“Yes, Joe,” I groan into the sheets. I grip handfuls of blankets as he strips me of my pride with that hand.  

“What’s that?”  
  
“I said yes, Joe!”  
  
He pulls me half off the bed using my ankles. My feet hit the floor and he kicks them apart. His hips smack against mine, cock hard along the cleft of my ass. I stifle the whimper that tries to worm between my teeth. If I whimper, it’ll just make it worse.  
  
_Just a just a just a man onlyaman justajustajust–_  
  
The mattress sags under the weight of the oncoming violence. He pants raggedly into my ear, “Say it again. With my title.”  
  
“Yes, Immortan.”  
  
“Yes, Immortan _what?”_  
  
Every muscle in my body is rigid and clenched with fear. “Yes, Immortan, I’ll ask permission.”  
  
“Before you do anything.”  
  
“Before I do anything.”  
  
He rams his cock into me. I gulp silence.  
  
“It sounds like you want to scream,” he says, hand pressing hard between my shoulder blades.  
  
It’s over. He is a lion and I am downed prey. “May I scream, Joe?”  
  
“May I? There are those beautiful manners again.”

He thrusts. It hurts. So much. “May I scream, Joe, please?”  
  
He leans forward to wrap one palm over my mouth. “No, you may _not.”_

  
______________________________

  
He gives me a rag to clean myself when he’s finished. It comes away crimson.  
  
I fold it up neatly and put it into my pocket. He’s allowed me to dress.  
  
He’s crouching, rummaging around in a footlocker. The sunrise stripes his back with gold. With my eyes, I stab him a thousand times along either side of his spine.  
  
“Ah, here it is.” He holds up a wheel.  
  
My heart goes still. It’s the wheel from our car. The wheel I left inside when we found the strange little water hole, so seemingly artificial in the waste but impossible to pass up. The wheel that was gone when we came back after scooping the wet grit into our carriers. The wheel that, if we’d had it, would have allowed us to escape, or at least try.  
  
It was a trap. Made by the truck with tides slapping inside. I should have known, but the youngest had been so _thirsty._  
  
I will not ask permission to cry.  
  
If he notices my despair, he gives no sign. His deep voice is bored. “Go get your car. Bring it to the War Boys who wear the black foreheads. They’ll know what to do.”  
  
“And what then?”  
  
“The Imperators will tell you. Look for one with a mechanical arm. She should be… sympathetic.”  
  
“She?” A female in this murderously male army.  
  
He points to my pocket where I stashed the bloodied rag. “Have her take you to the Organic, as well.” He shrugs, straightens up and stretches. My blood stains his limp cock and is streaked across the fronts of his thighs.  
  
“You really need to learn how to relax,” is how I am dismissed.

  
_____________________

  
It’s top-up day when I see the youngest one and the skinny one again. They wear the white linen. The youngest has a crutch and the skinny one helps her walk.  
  
They don’t see me. The hanging gibbet in which I am curled is above their heads. I strain to watch as they are led into the musky alcove which the Organic has the gall to call a “clinic”. It’s hard to follow their progress because of the cannula sunk in my neck.  
  
I never did find out what happened to the others: the older women, the men. My whispered questions floated unanswered across this sun-dappled space of death. The other bloodbags had nothing but drained silence for me.  
  
Time doesn’t matter here. It could be an hour or a year. Eventually, the Immortan comes in. The dying War Boys scramble up from the stone benches to beg weakly for absolution. He strides through the room, patting heads.

I bite my knuckles when I hear the yelps of pain coming from the clinic.  
  
The youngest coming stumbling out. She falls down at Joe’s boot and crawls, sobbing, behind his legs. The Organic follows, a greasy smile smeared across his face. He snaps his gloves off with an air of meaty satisfaction. “Congratulations, boss.”  
  
I make a disgusted sound. Joe looks up and our eyes meet.  
  
It had happened, just like I’d thought it would. Not from the first time and not even the second. But eventually it did, and for a while, my days had been easy and my hands uncut from wrenching on engines. I was brought soft blankets and given plentiful food. I was too grease-stained to be brought Up Top, but the War Boys knew I was loved.  
  
And then I lost it.  
  
The Immortan came and mourned by my stone bedside. Tuning engines roared a dirge for my loss. His grief had been absolutely sincere. I spat on it. I spat on _him_. He’d slapped me and, in my vengeful disgust, I’d slapped him back, knocking the mask loose. The only thing that kept him from blowing my head clean off was the Organic shouting from the doorway. “We can use her as a donor!”  
  
His eyes, now locked on mine, narrow. His crow's feet crinkle at the outer corners.  There is no anger in them. What's there is something so much more terrible.  
  
Smiling. The bastard is _smiling._  
  
The cannula chokes with my curdled blood.  
  
_Just a man– only a man–_  
  
_No._  
  
A monster.


End file.
